Of Caskets and Old Shoes
by fitz and dizzyspells
Summary: Steve knows a lot about death. He can tell you about all the shapes, all the sizes, and all the smells that it comes in. He knows a dead guy just by looking at him. ONESHOT.


I don't own The Outsiders, written by S.E. Hinton. I don't own Steve Randle, the central character of this story. Thanks to some blue december and Hahukum Konn for betaing!

* * *

_The mass and majesty of this world, all that carries weight and always weighs the same lay in the hands of others. - W.H. Auden, The Shield of Achilles_

It was cut up and bloody; a purple bruise had already swelled up around his left eye, and turned a nasty red color on the outer edge. I remember leaning in real close, close enough that I could just about taste the smell of rot, and saying, "Hey, pal. How's the war?"

Brett Wright got behind him and said, "Real good, son. I can almost kiss the sky."

"Yeah? How 'bout you share some of them tranks with me. I could use a real good war about now."

I kicked at the old man's foot, which had yet to decompose. It was rough, calloused and blistered, like he'd never worn shoes a day in his life. He was a paddy farmer, all right.

"Sure thing, buddy."

Brett Wright took out a few tranks and a spliff and we had ourselves a really fun war. We offered some to the old man, but he didn't take any. He was a square.

After we were feeling really good, Brett and I dumped the old guy's body in a river and held an impromptu funeral. We paid our respects to him and then threw his body downstream. His face bobbed from beneath the current until all I could see was that nasty purple bruise, right around his eye. Brett and I gave him a good funeral, as good as he would get and went on our way.

On our way back I turned to Brett and said, "That old gook … he reminds me of this kid's funeral. He got hit by a car when we were twelve."

Brett raised his eyebrows, as if being reminded of some kid was an incredibly odd thing. "Why'd he make you think of that?"

I shrugged and hitched my thumbs through my belt loops. "I guess it was a stupid thing to think of. Just did, though."

Brett grinned. His eyes were glassed over and he spoke very slowly and deliberately. "Bet a car hit that gook, too. Bet a big old tank came by shot him down, huh?" Brett grinned at the perverse play-by-play in his mind.

That night when we went back to the compound for supper, I didn't see Brett. Two weeks after that, I was asked to identify a body from my unit.

It was hot and muggy, the type of humidity that feels like a curtain you're passing through with every step you take. Raining harder than I'd seen it rain in a long time. There was no wind, just a still, constant rain, washing the country. Maybe cleansing it of whatever sins anyone might have committed, if you believe in that.

I went into the tent they'd put him in. Behind the tent was a pile of shoes; shoes stacked high enough that you could fall into them, take a swim in all the shoes of all the dead boys in Vietnam, and never come back up. Someone took off that dead kid's shoes, checked for dog tags, and put his boots aside to come back to later so that they too would become part of the mountain.

His jaw was missing and where there should have been flesh, there was jagged bone, infested with flies. This kid was in bad shape, like something had gotten to him and never even given him a fighting chance.

The kid on that table was in the worst shape I've ever seen.

_He didn't look asleep, like you're supposed to look. He looked dead. _

It's funny, because the way they prepared W.K. Eubanks's body, you'd never think he'd died the way he did, which I guess is the point. I remember my dad drove me to the place, and I sat the entire car ride with my knees folded to my chest and stared out the window. I didn't know what else to do.

Occasionally, Dad would open his mouth, as if to say something, then close it again. He'd chew the air for a minute, bite his lip, take his handkerchief from his lap and wipe his forehead, though he wasn't sweating at all. Then go back to driving in complete silence.

We walked from a commuter lot down the road. I felt awkward in Dad's suit: in trousers that Mom had rolled several times and pinned for me, a white shirt that I forgot to tuck in, and dress shoes, worn down to the sole. A boy being eaten alive by his oversized suit.

The wake wasn't held at a funeral parlor, but at St. John the Divine's on Reservoir Road. That was one of the few times I'd ever gone to church, and walking in, I felt an incredible gloom. Everything about the place was gloomy: the red carpet, the stained glass with the dying Christ, the beheaded John the Baptist and St. Peter hanging on an upside down cross. There was an impossibly-large crucifix at the back of the pulpit with Christ on it, thorns piercing into his head, glaring down on everyone as if to say, "You did this to me."

_(Father, why have you forsaken me?)_

At any minute, I thought that cross would fall over, crush the casket and bring down the candles around it. At any minute the church would go up in flames.

Dad put his hand on my back, clapping it hard. He gave me a small nod and stepped back toward the huge church doors.

I didn't look back to where my father stood, but I imagine that if I had, he would have still been there, stoic, big as a mountain at six feet and four inches, with his thumbs hooked into his belt loops, trying to be as small as possible. Maybe he fiddled with a handkerchief. Maybe he shuffled his feet.

I hooked my own thumbs into my own belt loops, drew in a deep breath and straightened my back, bracing myself to see a boy who had just fallen asleep in a casket, maybe taken a nap in a bad place.

_(The crucifix is going to fall…)  
_

I walked faster (faster than was probably appropriate) so that I could warn him; tell him about the thing that wanted to kill him.

_(… and crush you.)_

W.K. Eubanks was a handsome boy. One day, he would have been tall, his boyish charms growing into a smooth finesse. He would've had the world before him, surrounded by scholarships and money. Now he was in a casket, just taking a long nap.

_No. The guy was dead. Dead as dead gets._

I looked at his hand where a layer of skin was starting to peel back, just starting to gently reveal bone. It felt voyeuristic. Kid must've been young, probably about my age. Seeing that bone peeking out where skin should have been made me feel like if I was watching someone perform a secret ritual, peering in through a tight keyhole. It was as uncomfortable as it was fascinating.

It was impossible to identify him on sight, and for one quick moment I felt a hot surge of anger at them for asking me to take a look at this boy. It was as if somebody had driven a couple of amps of electricity through me and left me to fry. It was a cruel thing to do.

I told them, "You're gonna need his dog tags to figure him out. I know my unit, but I can't tell you who he is on sight." I tried to, I truly did. I studied him up and down for some telltale sign. Ted Chambers always rolled up a pack of cigarettes in his sleeve. Nerbetski had a Saint's bracelet around his wrist. Kempner's pants had rotted until he'd had to make them into cut-off pants. This boy wasn't any of them. "Mind if I step outside while you check him out?"

"No, go ahead … Rankin?"

"Randle," I said.

"Right." The Sergeant ran a hand through his hair and shook his head at the kid. "_Christ almighty_ have you ever seen a poorer sight?"

I went outside and had a cigarette under the awning while the rain kept on falling, making the whole country as green as the summer. If it wasn't for that goddamn war, it would've been a really spectacular place. Something out of National Geographic, except instead of some tribal cooze with saggy breasts, it'd be a bunch of hunched-over Vietnamese folks in a rice paddy, surrounded by these incredible sloping hills. It could've been a really spectacular sight if it wasn't for the damn war.

After a good ten, fifteen minutes, I went back into the tent to check up on the dead boy. They were rifling through his stuff.

_I leaned over his body to get a better look. It felt wrong. It felt voyeuristic._

For some reason, he was puffed up, like they'd filled him with too much formaldehyde. Maybe that's how he died. Maybe they drowned him in formaldehyde.

It reminded me of seeing an old person, how his face was warped and distorted.

I stared down at him and even at 12 I realized I was seeing a dead boy who had no business being dead. I nudged him on the shoulder and muttered, "Hey, asshole." The gesture was never returned.

Dad had come up behind me, offered me his handkerchief. "We should get home for dinner."

I don't recall asking my dad anything on the way out of the church. In fact, I'm sure that I kept my eyes on the floor, watching that ugly, stained carpet slip by beneath me.

Halfway down the rows of pews, Dad hooked his thumbs back into his belt loops. He cleared his throat and sighed. When he spoke he sounded uncomfortable, as if deep-down he knew that whatever he had to say was better off being kept to himself. "Bible says that in the midst of life we are in death."

I waited for another answer, a better answer than that, but it was the only one he could give and the only one I could accept.

I tried to imagine my dad waking up every Sunday morning, driving to service in the Vista and sitting among the sinless churchgoers, keeping his eyes fixed on the Bible as the preacher delivered a sermon on the moral wrongs of gambling or drinking. Little did they know, Dad had already had a beer before leaving and would have another one after he got home.

I turned around to get one last look at that crucifix. Dad wrapped his arm around me, pulled me into a one-armed hug and sighed. "I don't know why it happens, but sometimes it does. There are some things that the Bible don't explain very clearly, and this is one of them."

_He clapped me on the back and said - _

"Welp." The Sergeant was standing across the table from me, his fingers drumming on the table next to the body. "Guess he went AWOL. VC must've got to him pretty good. You close?" He had a fast, almost rhythmic way of talking, like he was from the city. It didn't much make comfortable.

"No." I was concentrating on Brett Wright's feet, which were covered in pair of grimy socks. I closed my eyes, imagined gangrene, mold, and a sickly purple bruise covering his feet. When I opened them again I saw the pair of socks he'd been wearing for a good month or so.

I wanted to pat his leg, make some gesture of comfort to the dead body in front of me, but the fear of contracting something (one of those diseases they always talked about in the training videos) kept me back. I really wanted to say sorry to my buddy, which is exactly what Brett Wright had been. He was one of the nicest guys I knew.

The Sergeant shrugged and shook his head. "Never seen a sadder sight … Hey, man. Do me a favor? Take these boots out back. We've got some newbies comin' in, I'm sure they'd 'preciate the favor."

I took Brett Wright's boots and walked outside to the mountain of dead shoes. I wound up to toss them to the top, but the windup turned into a mindless back and forth pendulum-swing of bootlaces and I passed right by the mountain, my feet moving without direction.

I must have walked three miles until I got to the river where we found the old man.

I tossed Brett's boots into the river and it carried them off some place. I'm sure that if I were to go back to Vietnam…

_(Oh, please God, no…)_

… and follow that river, even if it took me all the way down to the coast, I would find those boots, sitting there for ten years with the laces decayed and the soles having been eaten away. But I'm sure those leather boots would still be there.

W.K. Eubanks was not a friend. I can't count the number of times that he and I went at it in grammar school, fists flying with an undefined fury. W.K. Eubanks and I'd had a grudge match, but when I went to see him at that church with the sinister Christ who was so close to crushing him, I didn't consider him my enemy.

I'm 28 now and this is all I can do to keep myself alive, passive and sober. All I can do is tell you about Brett and Eubanks and that old man, the mountain of shoes and that river that's probably still there, ten years later.

I'll tell you something: that church where W.K. was buried is still there. I haven't been in since I was 12, but each time I pass by it, I still see those stained glass panels with the Chris, St. Peter and John the Baptist's head. I bet that grimy old rug is still there. The same claustrophobic feeling, like you were being smothered by the wrath of God.

I bet on my life that the river's still there. Twenty miles south from that river was a leper colony by the coast. I'll bet it carried the old square's body down there and I'll bet it carried those boots, too. I don't know for sure, of course, but I'd bet a lot of money that I'm right.

I can just about see all of their faces as clear as day. I can see Mrs. Eubanks, her face scrunched up in the most pitiful expression of pain I've ever seen, coming up to me and Dad on our way out, hugging my dad, and just crying. I can still see the awkward expression on my dad's face, somewhere between mild discomfort and pity as he patted her back with a stiff, flat hand.

I can't for the life of me figure out why I'm still here, but W.K., who had been biking to the Way Out Burger when he was run over by a car, is not. I don't know why Brett went AWOL and made himself good bait for the Vietcong, and I don't think I want to. I don't know why that old paddy farmer, slumped up against a tree had been left like that. At the time, I turned to Brett and said, "Old chink probably had it coming."

(It just happens, I guess.)


End file.
